Are we better off without denominations?

Jesus is fully God and He is Immortal. Jesus is fully human and He died for our sins. So you have a problem with that?

You are human and you will die. However according to John 3:16, if you believe in Jesus Christ you have eternal life, or you are immortal. Does that make you God?

I now repudiate Nestorianism. Jesus is both fully God and fully man in the sense that he has all the distinguishing factors of both. There needn’t be a contradiction.

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I am glad to hear it. It seems to me that you need to do more research before you take a stand and it is probably better to do it within the th3e church rather than outside it.

I would expect that a mainstream Protestant Church would give you more leew3ay than the Roman Cathodic Church, but it is up to you. Faith is a participatory activity, not something to be observed from a distance.

You also need to think about where you stand on the great ethical issues of our day in terms of faith.

Theologically I lean towards Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy more than Protestantism. I believe in:

  • Apostolic succession
  • Transubstantiation
  • The necessity of the sacraments for salvation
  • The authority of the sacred tradition and the church alongside scripture.
  • Technically I do believe salvation is by faith alone (the sacraments are acts of faith), yet I do believe that works are needed to complete our faith.

I am less keen on Oriental Orthodox Christianity, since it Judaizes in many ways. I will state that I also disagree with Catholicism on purgatory.

I lean conservative on most ethical issues.

My response to the OP question, “are we better off dropping denominations?” I answer with this imperfect analogy. If I go to a restaurant I’d want to know if I am walking into a McDonalds or a Kentucky Fried. It saves me time if they have a sign outside.

It seems to me that unifiliated or “community” churches often have denominational ties the church is trying to minimize in order to “reach” the broader community. Therefore, before going to a church which is only identified as a “community” church I’d check out their website.

IMHO it seems to me that unaffiliated churches often are de facto denominational churches by virtue of their unofficial association with a larger organization (something like the Gospel Coallition) and adhere to that organizations statement of faith. Or there are churches claiming to be nondenominational that operate like a denomination (such as the Plymouth Brethren). If it has webbed feet, feathers and quacks its a duck

Check out and do a search of Dr. Olson’s blog (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/) he has done lots of writing about this subject. In fact his post of today’s date looks interesting; who is really a fundamentalist and how the media gets it wrong

Larry

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That’s fine, but if we do away with denominations, you have to discard some of that stuff so that you do it my way…

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:slight_smile:

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